Picking Muscadine Grapes

It’s August and I have the canning bug. I’ve wanted to can for a long time but considering my old kitchen had a useable counter space of about 30 inches (yep, 30 inches) I literally had no where TO can. Well, those days are gone and I now have a beautiful, spacious kitchen. Yes, we remodeled it and it is 80% complete!

Back to canning.

We’re not gardening at the moment so I went on a hunt to find local, cheap, in-season produce to can. My search lead me to a u-pick grape orchard with 17 varieties of muscadine grapes that were ready to harvest. I dragged the family out (even my muscadine-hating hubby) and we made a great morning of it (before it got too hot).

These grapes are organic and grown this zero pesticides.

My girls had a great time.

How do people DO this? I can’t even grow a tomato.

My daughter thought this looked like a marble.

The owner was once a game warden in South Africa.

And it’s pretty obvious.

We spotted chickens at the farm. We miss our girls a lot. They were eaten by a bear many months ago.

We picked about 18 lbs. and at $2 a pound it wasn’t exactly cheap endeavor. But, I plan to make jelly with them and give them as Christmas presents.

Stay tuned for a canning video with these puppies.